View Single Post
Old 04-11-2008, 07:10 AM  
Sarah_Jayne
Now with more Jayne
 
Sarah_Jayne's Avatar
 
Industry Role:
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 40,077
Adult Webmastering 101: Text Links Are Your Friend

This tutorial is part of a series of tutorials I have done with the new adult webmaster in mind. This and all of the other tutorials and additional tips can be found in my Adult Webmastering 101 blog which is located in the resource section of the Max Cash affiliate area

====

Pictures may very well say a thousand words but when it comes to promoting adult sites it isn't always true that banners bring in more sales than text links. Yet, it would appear that a lot of new adult webmasters are either reluctant or slightly scared of giving up a banner spot on their pages for a text link.

In my role as affiliate support for Max Cash, I will often get a new webmaster signup and contact me straight away looking for banners. That is certainly understandable but when I talk to them about also trying out text links they don't appear to be convinced that the text links can work just as well and often better than the banners. Yet, if I can get them to take a risk and mix in well placed text links with their banners it is almost always the case that their sales go up.

There are various reasons why text links can be your friends when it comes to bringing in the hits and sales.

Firstly, surfers are so used to seeing banners that often they just blank them out. Think about your own internet surfing. What was the last banner you really noticed? And from there which is the last banner that you noticed that you actually clicked? Banners certainly have their place but it is usually a mistake to rely only on banners.

If you are creative enough with your text links and how you present them on your pages they can really catch the eye and, almost more importantly, the imagination of your surfers. Experiment with combinations of text sizes and colors and see what works best for you.

Which brings me to a second reason why text links can be your friends. Banners once made are what they are. They sell one aspect of the site from one perspective. If there is one thing that my Adult Webmastering 101 tutorials have been trying to show is that sales happen when you start to look around and see what angles your competitors *aren't* covering. With text links you aren't stuck to whatever the banner is saying. You can talk the language of your audience and sell them on the aspects of the site you know will interest them.

This can be particularly useful if you are trying to cover micro-niches bases. I have written in previous tutorials about looking at a niche site with micro-niche glasses and breaking the pictures on the tour down so you can use them to bring in the micro-niche traffic. With text links you can speak the language of the micro-niche and bring traffic to those sites without the need for banners.

This also ties in with last week's tutorial when I talked about knowing the names of the models on the sites you are promoting. Don't see a banner that features that model? Just put up a text link and tell rather than show your surfers that she is there.

The importance of language leads to a third reason that text links are helpful. Anything that adds text to your page is going to be good for you. If you use those text links properly they will not only be able to drive good traffic to your sponsors but they can also help you boost the relevancy of your pages. All text is an opportunity if done with care.

Finally for today, another way that I have found text links to be effective is in explaining the nature of the product you are trying to sell. For example, with Max Cash we offer Free Lifetime Memberships. Without exception, my affiliates that put up text and text links on their pages to stress the free memberships convert at better ratios than those that just lead the surfers to the sites and let them discover the free memberships themselves. With so much in this game it comes to filtering and prequalifying your traffic. If the surfer clicks a link knowing he is going to a Free Lifetime Membership site he has already shown he is somewhat interested or at least curious about that sort of site.

So, banners certainly have their place but the flexibility of text links really makes them invaluable to any adult webmaster.
Sarah_Jayne is offline   Share thread on Digg Share thread on Twitter Share thread on Reddit Share thread on Facebook Reply With Quote